


After Hours

by LeBibish



Category: Ranma
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-09-08
Updated: 2003-09-08
Packaged: 2017-10-18 07:32:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeBibish/pseuds/LeBibish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patterns ingrain themselves. Post-manga, Ukyou has a quiet night alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Hours

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** I do not own Ranma, Ukyo, or any other characters/situations created by Rumiko Takahashi.

Shadows lengthen, pools of darkness spreading across empty streets. The world is still in the deepening twilight. A girl stands in the open door of a store front, looking out at the orange sky, watching as it began to fade into darkness. Her face is tired, worn lines belying her age. Her body seems to curl into itself, slumped and drained like a wrung-out sponge.

 

She moves suddenly, straightening defiantly, her blank stare hardening. For a moment she stands against the coming darkness like a soldier, posed heroically in the lighted doorway. Then, she turns away, into the light. She surveys the restaurant, her restaurant, empty now of friends, customers, people. The tables have all been wiped down, the chairs diligently put away. It is clean and quiet and nothing like what she wants it to be.

 

Her eyes focus on a stool at the counter and her memories paint a figure sprawling onto the counter. A boy, with sparkling blue eyes and a wild grin, tearing into his food. She can almost hear his muffled comments...complaints about his day...gratitude for her cooking...

 

She hears a noise from outside and spins around, hoping, wanting, _needing_ it to be him there, a smile on his face for her, just for her...but it isn't him. It hasn't been him in a long time, since an almost wedding and a maddened impulse. And the smiles were never just for her, she thinks, viciously slamming shut the door and startling the cat that had been passing by.

 

Her shoulders slump and she leans briefly against the door before straightening up again. Slowly, ever so slowly, she finds a damp rag and begins to clean the countertop. Her movements are practiced, methodical, empty; her mind elsewhere.

 

So much time spent, energy wasted. At night, dreaming, and then, in the morning, waking up alone. In the day, chasing him. Always chasing, like a faithful dog following its master. Those rare times when it she seemed she had him. Clinging to his arm, reveling in his warmth, his presence, and looking up at his face to see...nothing. Worse, to see love and longing there, but not for her. Never for her.

 

Further back...a small girl running down a dirt road, chasing a yattai and the man who lied to her, stole from her. Chasing the boy, a pair of blue eyes, a black pigtail, and the hand waving... waving goodbye.

 _  
_

The girl falls to the road, exhausted. She yells out, curses them. "You jerks! You promised to take me with you!" As the man and boy vanish with the cart into the distance, her head falls forward until her forehead presses into the earth. The expression of rage fades from her face and the tears gathered in her eyes begin to fall. She whispers to the ground, broken words through her silent sobbing, "You promised..."

At school, she is mocked, laughed at, whispered about. At home, there is nothing. Her mother is dead. And now...it is as if her father were leaving too. He can't even look at her anymore. She has lost her playmate, and now he is costing her everyone else that she loves.

She makes oaths, as those who are wronged will, of vengeance and justice. Oaths made to a silent and empty sky. Oaths made to a silent man with empty eyes. And to herself she vows never to love again. Never to so desperately need something she could not have.

 

Vows that were so easily broken. All she had to do is look into his eyes, hear his voice, and she is lost again. If she has been otherwise. She has told herself so many times that she didn't love him, that she hated him, that she only wanted revenge. But she never forgot him. Her entire life since she was six years old has revolved around him.

 _  
_

She sighs and pushes away the memories. The counter is spotless, glistening in the dim electrical lights, but her hand still rub the rag back and forth over the smooth surface. She watches it, moving independent of her thoughts and emotions. Moving of its own accord, following the pattern learned long ago and refined through practice and experience. She wills her hand to stop moving, but it doesn't listen to her. It simply keeps moving, back and forth, up and down over the counter.


End file.
